Playing videogames is time-consuming. Luckily, now there's a machine that will play Pokemon X and Y while you sleep.

Becoming an expert Pokemon trainer is a labor-intensive process. You need to capture the Pokemon, hatch them, give them clever names, and train them to become expert killing machines. But, one go-getting young gamer has created a device that does much of the work for you. Appropriately enough, he calls it the Poke-O-Matic.

The device runs on an Arduino-powered microcontroller, which interprets user input and sends the information to a second microcontroller. Then the data is translated into control pad commands, which are sent to the 3DS. Once everything has been set up, the Poke-O-Matic will play Pokemon X and Y with no human interaction needed.

So far, the Poke-O-Matic can handle egg retrieval, hatching, nicknaming, and storing Pokemon, but all of the operations require that your character stay within a very well-defined area. However, a video that the machine's creator, dekuNukem, uploaded to YouTube indicates that the device is still a work in progress. So, it may become more feature-filled as the project evolves.

DekuNukem's 12-minute video shows the fruits of the Poke-O-Matic's labor. After running all night, dekuNukem's Pokemon day care was filled with 200 Honedge Pokemon, two of which were shiny.

If you're interested in creating your very own Poke-O-Matic, dekuNukem is encouraging players to proceed with caution. "If you want to make one," he says, "I would suggest you look at the video/code and write your own, don't try do replicate what I did exactly, which probably won't work."

Great, now I may ditch the whole playing part of the games I buy, oh joy!

But in all seriousness getting programs/bots is really just a way of "cheating" in games without cheats to get all the nice stuff which defeats the point of playing games, I want to feel as if I earned the pet/pokemon/weapon of winning +2. That's why we play games isn't it? To earn a sense of satisfaction at our skill/luck

Aren't you a little late on the ball here, I heard about this (or something like it) on roosterteeth AGES ago...or was it internet box? It works 'cos the transition screen takes a fraction of second longer to load if it is a shiny, it then flashes to say "hey, we got one".

I get the appeal of doing such a thing, the shiny rate seems to be insanely rare. Though you are kind of cheating yourself, getting one in a legit fashion will make it all the sweeter but getting one could take for fucking ever ... wouldn't blame anybody for doing it.

omega 616:Aren't you a little late on the ball here, I heard about this (or something like it) on roosterteeth AGES ago...or was it internet box? It works 'cos the transition screen takes a fraction of second longer to load if it is a shiny, it then flashes to say "hey, we got one".

I get the appeal of doing such a thing, the shiny rate seems to be insanely rare. Though you are kind of cheating yourself, getting one in a legit fashion will make it all the sweeter but getting one could take for fucking ever ... wouldn't blame anybody for doing it.

Different machine actually. That one you are talking about was set up to go through battles measuring the length of time said screen was up. If it wasn't a shiny Pokemon it was set to run away, if it was it then beeped the player to inform him or her of the shiny Pokemon. At which point he'd then have to go through the typical fight-capture because it can't automate that. The escapist did report on that.

This one seems to use breeding as a way of farming shiny Pokemon. It doesn't differentiate between one or the other though because, as said, it's through hatching them and not battles. Different system, and honestly this one is more of a brute force method than anything.

Yeah, I'm not sure if this is something to be praised or lamented. I know Pokemon isn't really just about catching them all, but that's still a pretty large part of the experience for most players and yet things like this automating the process seems somehow wrong.

DemikidZA:Great, now I may ditch the whole playing part of the games I buy, oh joy!

To be fair, the gaming industry seems hell-bent on getting us to pay to skip the actual content, so why not build a machine?

omega 616:Aren't you a little late on the ball here, I heard about this (or something like it) on roosterteeth AGES ago...or was it internet box? It works 'cos the transition screen takes a fraction of second longer to load if it is a shiny, it then flashes to say "hey, we got one".

That one was reported here before, too. This is a different one. They're not behind the ball. They're just reporting on something new. Ish.

See this is what happens when your game's prizes and desirables are based on slim random odds not skill.

DemikidZA:Great, now I may ditch the whole playing part of the games I buy, oh joy!

But in all seriousness getting programs/bots is really just a way of "cheating" in games without cheats to get all the nice stuff which defeats the point of playing games, I want to feel as if I earned the pet/pokemon/weapon of winning +2. That's why we play games isn't it? To earn a sense of satisfaction at our skill/luck

It's not a cheat really, it's not changing the odds, the chances of the bot getting the shiny are the same as a human's the only trick is the botcan go on for hours without sleep and will never get bored.

Satisfaction at the point of luck is somewhat hollow. now if nintendo was smart they'd have made shinies the result of the playter doing something exceptional that required some amount of skill.

BigTuk:See this is what happens when your game's prizes and desirables are based on slim random odds not skill.

DemikidZA:Great, now I may ditch the whole playing part of the games I buy, oh joy!

But in all seriousness getting programs/bots is really just a way of "cheating" in games without cheats to get all the nice stuff which defeats the point of playing games, I want to feel as if I earned the pet/pokemon/weapon of winning +2. That's why we play games isn't it? To earn a sense of satisfaction at our skill/luck

It's not a cheat really, it's not changing the odds, the chances of the bot getting the shiny are the same as a human's the only trick is the botcan go on for hours without sleep and will never get bored.

Satisfaction at the point of luck is somewhat hollow. now if nintendo was smart they'd have made shinies the result of the playter doing something exceptional that required some amount of skill.

I said cheat in the context that it gives you the content without any effort on your part (besides the activation of the cheat) e.g: The jet spawning cheat in GTA, you can get the jet in game with a bit of effort but you get it instantly with a cheat, now I argue that you'll enjoy the jet you took time to get rather than the cheat spawned one. I agree about the luck part though, should've said dedication instead, playing through however many battles till you get the Pokemon you want. That would be worthy of a sense of satisfaction.

I fail to see how finding shinies is fun. My thoughts on it are basically Pokemon is a game that encourages completionism and finding all the things. But then it makes some things very hard and very boring to find. So you want to find them, but it's very hard and boring. In my case, I am only in it for the thing. I despise the finding. So if someone's found a way to cut that part out entirely - a part that is basically just a waste of time and that teaches the player nothing and adds nothing to the experience - good on them. Go for it. That's not where the gameplay lies.

I said cheat in the context that it gives you the content without any effort on your part (besides the activation of the cheat) e.g: The jet spawning cheat in GTA, you can get the jet in game with a bit of effort but you get it instantly with a cheat, now I argue that you'll enjoy the jet you took time to get rather than the cheat spawned one. I agree about the luck part though, should've said dedication instead, playing through however many battles till you get the Pokemon you want. That would be worthy of a sense of satisfaction.

This part just caught my attention. The thing is, in GTA getting a jet is a considerable gameplay challenge, whereas essentially grinding or running away (the latter is prevalent I think) isn't enjoyable or challenging in itself.

Glad to see no one is making a full on debate over is morally wrong or not (cheating wise and taking away the spirit of catching one) unlike the last news post of this!!!

I do got to admit now this version see elaborate now to the point it's full on lazy mode on getting a shiny Pokemon to the point they may aswell make shiny encounter 50/50 to a normal non shiny encounter.

In short, nobody has ever cared. Shiny is a meaningless "achievement," rewarding RNGesus more than player skill or even dedication. In recent gens, breeding two pokemon that werent from the same country upped the chance of shiny poke-kids to 1 in 6000 (roughly)... so even breeding is horribly, horribly inefficient.

But shiny status literally doesn't matter at all. It's completely unrelated to movepool or nature. A shiny poke is only as strong as a normal poke... often less so, since the rarity usually means it was kept due to skin more than stat distribution.

There was a system in SS/HG (I think) that made catching shinies easier. It was still grindy, but manageable enough. I'm a bit disappointed that they didn't put in a similar feature in the other games - shinies would get you pretty much whatever you wanted in the GTS.

Brilliant bit of engineering. And it raises questions, like how much grinding and randomness is really a good thing to put in to a game before frustration risks overtaking fun.

Now, I was never what you'd call hugely in to Pokemon, though I've played a couple games, and found them fun for a while. For me, the trouble became collecting them. Not only were the means of storage and retrieval and catalogueing the little brassica clunky, but I wanted to Catch 'Em All.

And you can't. Can't be done. They're scattered across games and systems, tucked in to little pockets of time and physical locations in the real world that are just plain out of reach. To actually have one or more of each of the things, frolicking in a field somewhere and somehow not murdering eachother would be a grand accomplishment one could look out over and be quite pleased, possibly from the back of a glorious soaring dragon or giant winged lobster.

But no. I call it The Pokemon Problem now. Just wanting to play the game and find the creatures and plant fruit, hatch eggs and bake them cookies is not enough to Catch 'Em All.

AuronFtw: In recent gens, breeding two pokemon that werent from the same country upped the chance of shiny poke-kids to 1 in 6000 (roughly)... so even breeding is horribly, horribly inefficient.

Actually, in generation four this took the shiny chance to 5/8192 (the default being 1/8192) and in generation five it became 6/8192. Still rare but it's entirely possible to breed a thousand eggs if you really want a shiny. In fact, in generation 6 (X/Y) it's believed by most to be even higher, but we haven't been able to examine the code yet and find out.

Took me about 120 eggs in X for my first shiny, and I found a few more in the wild in quick succession. A tale many long-time players are repeating. This has never happened in previous generations to this degree.

DemikidZA:But in all seriousness getting programs/bots is really just a way of "cheating" in games without cheats to get all the nice stuff which defeats the point of playing games, I want to feel as if I earned the pet/pokemon/weapon of winning +2. That's why we play games isn't it? To earn a sense of satisfaction at our skill/luck

If they havent removed the actual cheats, or, worse, made us pay for them, from the games this would have been unnecessary. you used to be able to use cheap codes, now you have to either grind in boredom or buy them, so what we do instead is build bots to remove the boring parts.And if thats your game, then your game is boring.

Yes, we play games to earn a sense of sattisfaction with out skill. but not luck. we want to earn things because we are good at doing it not because random number generator said so.

In short, nobody has ever cared. Shiny is a meaningless "achievement," rewarding RNGesus more than player skill or even dedication. In recent gens, breeding two pokemon that werent from the same country upped the chance of shiny poke-kids to 1 in 6000 (roughly)... so even breeding is horribly, horribly inefficient.

But shiny status literally doesn't matter at all. It's completely unrelated to movepool or nature. A shiny poke is only as strong as a normal poke... often less so, since the rarity usually means it was kept due to skin more than stat distribution.

I'm not sure how you came to the conclusion that nobody cares. Shiny pokemon are a very big deal and there are quite a few people who would trade legendary pokemon for a shiny even if it's IV's aren't very stellar. And breeding to get a shiny is pretty easy nowadays I got a shiny Tyrantrum in only a few eggs and a Slurpuff I breed to have stellar IV's.

They don't work on the latest firmware update for the 3DS. Nintendo has been locking out 3rd party cheating devices since the Wii, and couldn't do it for the DS or DSi because they couldn't really do entire firmware updates like they can nowadays.

They don't work on the latest firmware update for the 3DS. Nintendo has been locking out 3rd party cheating devices since the Wii, and couldn't do it for the DS or DSi because they couldn't really do entire firmware updates like they can nowadays.

Really?

Because I had a cheating device on my Wii. Worked just fine.

Nintendo in reality wont stop anything. If a group really wants to make it happen, be it chip or software, it will happen.